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Achieving the IHI Triple Aim: Summaries of Success

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Increasingly, sites participating in the IHI Triple Aim Initiative are able to point to successes on all three dimensions — population health, individual care, and cost. Health care reform is taking center stage in many health systems around the world, and experience of sites as part of the IHI Triple Aim Initiative may be informative to health system leaders as well as other organizations providing health care services. Summaries of several examples are given below.

2012:

Primary Care Coalition, Montgomery County, Maryland: The Coalition's President, Steve Galen, says this work required a completely new way of thinking about health care. “The Triple Aim provides us with a framework that we can share with other people — our county government understands the Triple Aim. The whole community is moving toward a population health focus.”

2010:

A Commonwealth Fund case study series (July 2010) highlights three organizations that are transforming care as part of the IHI Triple Aim Initiative.

Bellin Health, Wisconsin: Bellin Health works with employers using an innovative framework it calls the Total Health Model. The model’s four components — Health Knowledge, Health Advancement, Productivity Enhancement, and Health Navigation — offer employees greater access to health services and improved health, and employers decreased costs. If adopted on a national level for employers, this model could generate $40 billion in savings annually.

Genesys Health System, Flint, Michigan: In a uniquely challenging environment that has struggled with chronic unemployment for decades, Genesys Health System and its partners Genesee Health Plan and Genesys Physician Hospital Organization use HealthWorks to better engage patients in their own care. The combination of a Patient-Centered Medical Home and a Health Navigator who supports patients, providers, and links both with community resources helps to improve access and appropriate utilization. Genesys says that Healthworks is demonstrating 10 percent to 25 percent lower health care costs than competitors, across a diverse population that includes both insured and uninsured.

HealthPartners, Minnesota: HealthPartners Medical Group introduced BestCare in 2004, a program designed around Consistency (reliable processes), Customization (adapting care to individual needs), Convenience (improving access), and Coordination (using Medical Home model). HealthPartners calculates that spreading their best practices nationwide would save $2 trillion in ten years.QuadMed, Wisconsin: QuadMed is a leader in employer-sponsored, worksite health care, bringing nearly all primary health care services in-house for its own 22,000 employees and dependents, and managing clinics for two other national companies. Thirty- to 90-minute appointments support prevention and wellness, onsite lab, x-ray and ancillary services offer convenience and coordination, and the result is more spending on primary care and less on hospitalization and pharmacy. QuadMed spends about 31 percent less to cover QuadGraphics employees than the average Wisconsin company. Read a more in-depth case study by The Commonwealth Fund.

Queens Health Network, New York City: Queens Health Network is a regional health care system that is part of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corp. With a largely low-income client population, QHN focuses on improved access through an ambulatory redesign initiative (reducing visit cycle time — the amount of time from the patient’s arrival to departure — from 260 minutes to less than 60 minutes), disease management, guiding patients to appropriate levels of care (resulting in $1.8 million savings through reduced ED visits and admissions), and the use of electronic health information technology to support care (through more than $9 million in health IT funding over last four years).